


it's a fool who plays it cool

by a_fandom_affliction



Series: you'll do [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Boys In Love, Castiel Loves Dean Winchester, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Castiel doesn't want Dean to leave, Cuddling, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Dean wants to leave, Falling In Love, Fear of Being Left Behind, Fluff, Heartbeats, I Love You, Internal Fear, Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not a big part but its mentioned so, Overthinking, Past Child Abuse, Pining, Pining Castiel, Truth Games, Truth or truth, fluffy fluff, hand holding, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 08:44:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8049778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_fandom_affliction/pseuds/a_fandom_affliction
Summary: Castiel's a worrier, and Dean's restless.
They talk it out.





	it's a fool who plays it cool

**Author's Note:**

> Yikes.
> 
> I'm writing each of the "you'll do" works as a quick warm-up for my more extensive writing, so please, please, /please/ excuse any changes in voice or tempo. I'm trying to keep these consistent, but my brain isn't helping me. At all. So.

 

“I don’t like to wear socks to bed. I feel like my toes are suffocating."

 

“I’ve been wearing the same flannel shirt every Wednesday for the past three months, and no one has said anything about it, yet.”

 

“My mom collects miniature lighthouse figurines, and I break them because I think they’re ugly.”

  
  
“I once lied about having a peanut allergy.”

 

“I never told my brother that his girlfriend called the house looking for him. They broke up a few days after, because of it.”

 

“I took a bunch of Adderall right before my SATs.”

 

“I once said I wasn’t a virgin  during a game of Never Have I Ever.”

 

“I puked in church one Sunday because I had a hangover, but I told my dad I had food poisoning.”

 

“I have to write out what I say to you on the phone before I call.”

 

“I burned my dad’s socks in the fireplace because he hit my little brother.”

 

“When I was a kid, I carved my brother’s name into the coffee table so he’d be the one getting yelled at, for once.”

 

“I think about death more than any normal person should.”

 

“I’ve never said ‘I love you’ in any of my previous relationships.”

 

“Fair enough.”

 

Dean loves to end their conversations that way, with some kind of bookend that’s hard for Castiel to respond to. It’s like Dean doesn’t want to hear any more, or say any more, even though it’s Dean’s stupid game. Dean usually ends it with a kiss, and Castiel swears he can taste the truth that passes between them.

 

Castiel really doesn’t get Dean, sometimes. The game they play makes no sense. It’s like Dean makes light of all the lies they tell and all the secrets they keep. They flaunt them like battle wounds; Castiel will show Dean, Dean will show Castiel. Dean wants to know everything about Castiel, like it’s his job to collect these pieces of information. Dean makes it his duty to coax them out of Castiel. To dig them out and string up Castiel’s insides like photographs covered in Photo-Flo, hanging to dry in a darkroom.

 

They are speaking another language together. Castiel feels like he and Dean are their own indigenous tribe, sitting around, sipping hot chocolate - not coffee, Dean hates coffee - from Styrofoam cups and stretching the holes in their earlobes. They speak together in tongue clicks and indescribable combinations of sounds to make what they say their own. In a way, it makes it easier for Castiel to confess his sins; someone else would get lost in the translation. No one else understands them. Castiel traces the veins on Dean’s forearms and relishes the fact that someone of equal caliber has come along.

 

“I would live forever if I could, but not like this.” Dean says the things that Castiel could only dream of thinking one day. It’s a gift and curse, because Dean sounds like he’s trying to quote The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

 

“How do you mean?”

 

Dean sighs. “I want to start over. I’m too messed up. I wanna go on without all of my past mistakes. I don’t want to go to college, I want to go to Big Sur and throw myself off a cliff and start new.”

 

Maybe they’re not of equal caliber. Maybe Dean just keeps Castiel around so Castiel can tell Dean his secrets, and Dean can turn them into works of art for his creative writing class. The teacher gave Dean an A-plus on the story he wrote about Castiel’s grandfather dying. Dean never would have known that Castiel stole his dog tags out of the casket if Castiel hadn’t told Dean during a round of their little game. Dean got offended when Castiel got angry, and said, “Maybe I could write like you if I drank the amount of alcohol that you do.” But Castiel apologized when Dean, already tipsy, began to cry about his dad hitting him as a kid, and said that he’s unable to express that part of his life in any way. Dean said that he needed to express someone else’s life. Castiel hates it when boys cry. Especially Dean.

 

“Once, I smoked weed that I found in my brother’s room, and I tried to write like Hemingway, but it didn’t work.” Oh, crap.

 

“That’s beautiful.”

 

Why’d Castiel tell Dean that? Now Dean’s going to turn it into some kind of coming-of-age story, and Mr. Shurley will give him a big, fat, red check mark in his grade book.

 

Dean is always on the brink of destruction. About to be caught, or caged, or kicked out. It’s like Dean wants to be homeless. Like Dean wants an excuse to not shower for days , and bum from one friend’s couch to another. Dean does that already, but sometimes people at school ask Castiel why Dean’d rather sleep on a park bench than go back to his warm apartment with the red sign and the big window in the living room.

 

Dean takes things for granted, like his trust fund. Dean calls it hush money, a way to keep him from calling child services, even though he turned eighteen three years ago. Dean wants to burn his Social Security card and hop in a boxcar. Dean pretends to be poor by wearing ripped flannel shirts and using cheap, disposable razors that leave little bumps under his chin. Too bad Dean isn’t underprivileged, or anything of the sort. Dean took acting classes at the rec center. Dean’s mom was a den mother for his Boy Scout troop. Dean’s persona is so clearly a sham that his friends call him “faux-hemian” and laugh at his worn-out copy of Into the Wild.

 

Everything is a game, with Dean. Castiel doesn’t know if he knows who Dean really is, and he doesn’t think Dean knows, either. Castiel loves Dean, but Dean is making himself into something that Castiel doesn’t recognize. Castiel can’t tell if it’s a clever mask, or an act that Dean can drop like magician’s assistant. Castiel’s afraid that it’s what Dean’s become.

 

It is six minutes past Castiel’s dorm curfew, but he doesn’t really care. They could drive away in the drifting Chevy and never look back. They could go missing together. They could run away. That would be terrific. As unrealistic as Dean’s fantasies of vanishing from society may sound, they would be worth the trouble if it meant that Castiel could stay with Dean. Hitchhiking on barren roadsides, and scrounging through Dumpsters, and panhandling money would all be worth it if Castiel shared the experience with the only boy he’s ever loved.

 

Sometimes, Castiel worries that Dean will run away without him. Dean will pack up his car with his ragged jeans and dog-eared Henry Miller books and disappear without a trace. Even though they’re only kids, and spending the rest of their lives together seems like an infinite impossibility, Castiel guesses he would be heartbroken if Dean left alone. Castiel would never forgive him. Even if Dean came to Castiel’s doorstep a week later, weary from his travels and begging for love, Castiel would kick and scream like a toddler going red-raced in the cookie aisle of the grocery store. Castiel would never look Dean in the eyes again. He would erase the synapse that connects the memory of love to the memory of Dean that lies deep in Castiel’s brain.

 

“Don’t ever leave me, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

Dean puts his head on Castiel’s chest. Castiel has a headache. He can feel Dean’s hands on his sides through layers of thermal weave.

 

“Your heartbeat sounds irregular.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“I won’t leave without you. I like you too much to do that.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Does that make you feel better?”

 

“Yes, a little.”

 

Dean sighs. “Are you afraid I’m gonna leave soon?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Dean pauses. He’s probably planned out his whole escape in that ratty composition notebook that he carries in his tattered JanSport backpack. Dean’s probably printed out maps from MapQuest and used his colored pencils to mark the stops he thinks that Christopher McCandless or Jack Kerouac would have made. Dean’s probably scribbled out a few drafts of the story that details his undying love and regret to Castiel. He’ll send it when he reaches a truck stop in Iowa. Or a diner, outside of Kansas City.

 

Castiel knows the lies Dean tells. He knows the secrets Dean keeps. Castiel knows what makes Dean tick, what spells Dean knows how to cast. Dean has weaknesses that Castiel figured out after only a month. Dean described himself as a “tapestry of woven complexities” in one of his poems for Mr. Shurley. He got a B-minus on that one, the jerk. Dean is just smoke and mirrors. Dean is made up of miracles and bull and flippant remarks and a set of pearly white teeth.

 

“Drive me home?”

 

“If you want.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Silence. Dean turns the keys. Dean starts the engine.

 

“Wait. Never mind.”

 

If Dean said all the right things, would it make a difference? If he stopped acting like the world owes him something, would Castiel love him anymore? If Dean ran away and never showed his face in their town again, would it make Castiel regret telling him things? Possibly. But to think of Dean changing or leaving or disappearing from Castiel’s life, to think of Dean belonging to anyone else, or being anywhere but with Castiel, makes his heart feel like Swiss cheese.

 

So, he supposes that the game is what they have. All they have. Castiel supposes the lies they tell and the secrets they keep mean everything.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For thinking that you’re phony, sometimes.”

 

“You think that?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

“Well, you’re forgiven.”

 

“Okay. Thank you.”

 

Dean shuts off the engine.

 

Castiel’s wants to attach himself to Dean like a dust particle settling in a room full of sunlight. Castiel doesn’t have to be that significant; he has reasonable expectations. Castiel knows that Dean has bigger dreams, dreams bigger than Castiel. But Castiel promises that he will tell Dean more secrets, and Dean can turn them into mediocre stories. Castiel will tell Dean the truth, even.

 

Dean only has to let Castiel stay close. Just for a little while.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I appreciate comments and kudos. 
> 
> -Cory


End file.
